About Allison

Allison Daminger is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University in 2022. Her research focuses on how and why gender continues to shape individuals’ experiences at home and at work, even as support for gender-egalitarianism keeps growing.

Allison’s book, What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life, will be published by Princeton University Press in September 2025. In it, she draws on more than 170 interviews with members of both same- and different-gender couples to illuminate the underappreciated cognitive dimension of household work. Cognitive labor, which includes tasks like remembering when it’s time to schedule an oil change or deciding on a daycare center, is a core feature of household life that is poorly captured by existing metrics. Allison makes the case that we need to consider mind-use alongside time-use, and her book shows what we miss when we leave this important work out of the equation.

Allison’s research has been published in the American Sociological Review and Gender & Society. Her work has been recognized with multiple awards from the American Sociological Association. She is also passionate about translating academic research for readers outside the academy. Allison has written about gender inequality for The Guardian and The Behavioral Scientist, and her work has been featured in venues such as the New York Times, the BBC, and Psychology Today. She also writes an occasional newsletter that offers a sociological take on parenting and family life.